College of Design – School of Architecture – Ph.D. Proposal Defense – Tyler Pilet

Date/Time:                                         Wednesday, May 26th 4pm

Virtual Meeting Information:  Microsoft Teams Meeting

  Join on your computer or mobile app

  Click here to join the meeting

  Or call in (audio only)

  +1 470-705-2566,,883104644#   United States, Atlanta

  Phone Conference ID: 883 104 644#

Committee:

Dr. Tarek Rakha (rakha@design.gatech.edu) Assistant Professor of Architecture (Committee Chair)

Dr. Jason Brown (jbrittonb@gmail.com) Research Engineer at Raven Research

Dr. Russell Gentry (russell.gentry@design.gatech.edu) Associate Professor of Architecture and Civil Engineering (by courtesy)

Cheryn Metzger (cheryn.metzger@pnnl.gov) Residential Program Manager, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)

Dr. Juan Ordóñez (ordonez@eng.famu.fsu.edu) Professor, Mechanical Engineering, Florida State University

Title: Towards Understanding an Imperfect Built Environment: A Methodology for In-Situ Characterization of Building Envelope Thermal Performance

Abstract:

As buildings age, retrofits are becoming an increasingly important topic for the ever-growing and aging existing building stock.  Following construction, a building's energy footprint typically remains relatively stagnant, effectively locking-in that building's energy usage for its lifetime.  With 50% of America’s building stock built before 1980 and only 0.5–1% of existing buildings retrofitted annually, it is essential to reduce guesswork and make building energy retrofits more accessible to reduce the energy footprint of the building sector.  Building retrofits are plagued by a lack of original design documentation and general uncertainty regarding the building's envelope composition and integrity.  The goal is this work is to utilize the power of thermography and transient heat transfer modeling to non-intrusively characterize the thermal properties of a building's envelope to inform energy modeling, facade design, and project appraisal.  This work presents a methodology to identify representative thermal properties for existing building envelopes and build upon the industry’s knowledge of thermal mass performance and applications.  In addition to the proposal of a simulation approach, this research focuses on real-world application and application to the design of thermal mass in buildings.  This dissertation is designed to bridge the gap between the discrete procedures of building design, building audits, and building energy modeling processes.